Olive oil cracked double bass

[Jelle van Tilburg]

About 4 times a year a double bass will come in for repair or restoration.

Yesterday a customer brought in a double bass for a new bridge/ nut and some minor repair.

He mentioned the bass also had a small crack which he hoped I could take a look at. The small crack turned out to be a significant centerseam split (and around the top and back there were several open seams)

Here's where the fun starts.. The customers turns to me and says "don't know how this could have happened, I took real care to condition the bass with olive oil a few times a year"

(And I'm not talking bout a subtle bit of oil on the fingerboard.. He smeared olive oil all over the top, back and sides. You can literally fry an egg on this thing :) )

To keep the cracks/splits from "drying out". He rubbed olive oil in all the cracks, including the centerseam split.

After explaining what this means for my chances of fixing the bass, I told the customer I sleep over it to see if I could come up with any ideas to clean off the olive oil and glue the cracks/ splits and open seams as best as I can.

Anybody with (out of the box) ideas or suggestions to clean out the olive oil?

[Russell Vance]

Richard, yep, fair call;   I noted the same when I went looking for it:   there is a lot written about all this stuff that is circulating around the web and I may have been a little flippant in my dismissal of the silicone components found in several well know products.  

I cannot get my head around it at the moment and I reiterate we use the fisheye eliminator that does not contain this stuff.   I need to talk to the paint chemist to straighten this out and once I have done that I will come back with what he knows.  It's beyond my pay grade at the moment

Rusty.

[Kerry Krishna]

 It's always amazing when a 'Zombie Thread' takes off again, (that usually pisses me off for some reason...) and actually starts producing some amazing resolts. Thanks for all this Folks. Great Forum Building here!